Primavera Sound Festival 2011

Saturday, May 28

Perfume Genius [4:00 p.m.; Rockdelux Auditori]

Photo by Morgan Levy

Mike Hadreas of Perfume Genius specializes in wounded, eviscerating honesty and grim character studies. Now you know why the guy's playing a dark theatre in the middle of the afternoon. This time around, Hadreas' set was about twice as long as when I saw one of his first shows in New York last summer. He played a host of new songs (some slated for PG's forthcoming sophomore LP, which Hadreas recently said is finished), all bearing the confessional lyricism and soft-focus melodies that made Learning so strong. Hadreas' collaborator, Alan Wyffels, added keyboards and, in the case of Learning bonus track "Your Drum", a layer of sunrisen vocals. The latter was key, since Hadreas is still somewhat growing into his own as a live performer. When stripped of the distance of Learning's homemade production, his voice sounds a little shaky and nervous, something he's getting better at controlling but still has a little ways to go on. --LF

John Cale took on his 1973 masterwork Paris 1919 with a small-scale orchestra and backing band. If you know the record well, the orchestra's zig-zagging arrangements were distracting at times; the album's stately opener, "Child's Christmas in Wales", sounded slightly overstuffed. But they also added some beguiling new elements to the mix, creating torrents of darkness at the end of "The Endless Plain of Fortune" and reinforcing that much of this music was meant to sound grand and sweeping. Cale can't hit the high notes he used to reach, but he tackled the material with a robust swagger, including a gorgeously full-bodied take on "Antarctica Starts Here" that was easily one of my favorite moments of the entire festival. The album's shitkicking centerpiece, "Macbeth", was swapped to finish out the Paris 1919 portion of the program, and it made perfect sense as a rollicking closer.

After finishing the performance of the album, Cale and his band (occasionally joined by the orchestra) did a 40-minute set of other solo material, ranging from the spacey "Hedda Gabler", off of 1977's Animal Justice EP, to a loungey new song, "Don't Get Sentimental". This less compelling set had people streaming from their seats to the exits. --LF

Fleet Foxes [San Miguel Stage; 7:40 p.m.]

Photo by Shannon McClean

This time of year, the sun doesn't set in Barcelona until after 9 p.m. In addition to the jet lag, this did all kinds of crazy things to my Central Time Zone-adjusted body, like make me think it was only 10 p.m. when it was really 3 in the morning. It also meant that Fleet Foxes' 7:40 p.m. set occurred in broad daylight, with the sun perched at such an angle that it was very difficult to look straight at the stage. Without sunglasses, you risked blindness; with them on, you couldn't see the band, due to the darkness of the stage.

Not that you were really missing anything. Fleet Foxes, unfortunately, were not much to look at. They gave off a genial, friendly vibe, happy and humbled to be playing to such a huge crowd, but nothing about their barely-there stage presence demanded the eye's attention. Ears, on the other hand, were another story. Fleet Foxes sounded amazing, their harmonies inducing chills as they floated along the sea breeze. Throughout a setlist split between the first album, the Sun Giant EP, and Helplessness Blues, the band's pristine folk maintained its ethereal beauty, from opener "Grown Ocean" through "White Winter Hymnal", "Your Protector", "Mykonos", "Sim Sala Bim", to closer "Helplessness Blues". The only time the mood was shattered was during that awful sax part on "The Shrine/An Argument". Otherwise, it was the perfect soundtrack for sitting on the grass on a sunny afternoon by the seaside. --AP

Kurt Vile and the Violators [Jagermeister Vice;9:45 p.m.____]

Photo by Shannon McClean

Notice that Kurt Vile was billed with the Violators. His last few records-- 2010's Square Shells EP and this year's Smoke Ring For My Halo-- could be considered solo efforts in that they both primarily featured him on acoustic guitar, and they also sounded incredibly lonely and burnt-out. The rattling cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Downbound Train" that kicked off this set announced that this wasn't exactly going to be a desolate-sounding set. Turns out they're good at sludgy, noisy six-stringed rock music; Smoke Ring's sparsely clicking "Jesus Fever" was transformed into a flange-damaged burner, while the skronk-heavy set-closing take on "Freak Train" brought the house down. There were moments of intimacy, too: at one point, the band left the stage as Vile performed "In My Time" solo on guitar. --LF

PJ Harvey [San Miguel Stage; 10:30 p.m.]

Photo by Morgan Levy

PJ Harvey's latest LP, Let England Shake, is an album suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome, reporting back on the horrors of war from a removed, numbed distance. It's a powerful piece of work, laying out the gruesome realities of the battlefield matter-of-factly, with little emotional buffer. Harvey isn't moaning abstractions about death and destruction; she's calmly stating, "soldiers fall like lumps of meat."

When translated to a festival stage, however, this austere presentation didn't quite work. Festivals are good for big gestures and big drama, not subdued complexity. As such, Harvey's restrained performances of "The Words That Maketh Murder", "Written on the Forehead", "On Battleship Hill", and other Let England Shake tracks came across as stiff and flat. And it's quite unsettling to watch a drunk group of friends dance and clap to lines like "What is the glorious fruit of our land?/ Its fruit is deformed children," just because it's got a good beat and they aren't paying attention to what she's singing.

Wearing a long, white, long-sleeved dress and a feathered headdress, Harvey didn't move much, holding back the intensity she has been known for on past tours. Classic flame-throwing tracks like "Down by the Water", "Big Exit", "C'mon Billy", and "Meet Ze Monsta" were neutered by the tidy presentation. She also threw a few curveballs into the setlist, like Is This Desire?'s "Angelene" and "The Sky Lit Up", White Chalk's "The Devil", the Let England Shake B-side "The Big Guns Call Me Back Again", and Uh Huh Her's "Pocket Knife". Those might have pleased super-fans, but failed to grab the majority of the crowd, who only really perked up for "Down by the Water" and "Big Exit". The whole set would have been better suited to a dark, intimate club. --AP

Dean Wareham Plays Galaxie 500 [11:15 p.m.; ATP]

Photo by Shannon McClean

Dean Wareham's been doing the "Plays Galaxie 500" live thing since last year's limited run of U.S. shows. There's no doubt, at least, that people want to hear him sing and play these songs again, as Wareham and Co.'s set drew a considerably large crowd at the ATP stage-- a crowd that was riding high over football club Barcelona FC's just-sealed victory against Manchester United (the game was broadcast on multiple screens at the nearby Llevant stage earlier in the evening). They cheered loudly for every song, which were performed capably by Wareham and his crew like an ace cover band. Which, really, is what this performance was; Dean Wareham might be on stage and singing "Blue Thunder" as it sounds on On Fire, but it's not a Galaxie 500 performance, so it feels more like karaoke takes on his own material. --LF

Mogwai [Llevant; 12:15 a.m.]

Photo by Shannon McClean

The high-stakes tension and drama of Mogwai's early material-- specifically, 1997's still-perfect Young Team-- isn't the main focus anymore, but the charging shoegaze melodies and moments of instrumental bliss that mark the highlights of this year's Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will are a fine replacement. Plus, they work great in a live setting, as demonstrated by last year's excellent stage document Special Moves, and, of course, this hour-plus set.

Mogwai clearly have a bigger following abroad than they do in the U.S., and it was a treat to enjoy all the loud guitar and overlapping melodies as a part of a crowd so massive. This stuff was practically made for shared experience: during the quiet section of set highlight and Young Team closer "Mogwai Fear Satan", a guy standing next to me turned and said, "It's coming". Not a second later, the band launched head-first into the ascending rush of guitars that makes the epic track so utterly energizing-- and we both had ear-to-ear grins on our faces. --LF

Swans [Ray-Ban Stage; 12:15 a.m.]

Photo by Morgan Levy

For a festival taking place in the paradise setting of a Mediterranean beachfront in the summer, Primavera sure booked a whole lot of scary, evil old dudes: Grinderman, Suicide, Einstürzende Neubauten, Shellac, Pere Ubu, Public Image Ltd., and Swans, who played right before Odd Future and were way more terrifying. Michael Gira may have discovered Devendra Banhart and spent time playing with Akron/Family, but up on stage with the latest incarnation of his legendary no wave band Swans (featuring former members as well as newcomers), he still looked like he could kill and eat a water buffalo with his bare hands.

Most of Swans' set was instrumental, devoted to rumbling drones summoned from the depths of hell leading to cathartic climaxes that simultaneously recalled orgasm and the electric chair. (Swans have always teetered on the edge between pleasure and pain.) Drummers Thor Harris (also of Shearwater) and Phil Puleo pummeled duel kits and bells, gongs, and other assorted pieces of shrapnel, scraping out a malevolent low end. Gira yelled into the air as he attacked his guitar, and when he wasn't attacking his guitar, he attacked his face, slapping himself and sticking his fingers in his mouth. Occasionally, a song would rise out of the murk and Gira would storm the microphone. Tracks from the new Swans album My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, like "Jim" and "Eden Prison", sounded just as brutal as "I Crawled", from the black days of 1984.

At the end of Swans' set, Gira shouted, "Spanish people! Rise up! Overthrow your government! Now! Overthrow the capitalists! Long live socialism! Now!" But it wasn't even his most alarming statement of the night. That was: "I want to have sex with each and every one of you after the show." Probably the scariest thing I heard all week. --AP

Animal Collective [San Miguel Stage; 2:00 a.m.]

Photo by Morgan Levy

I've seen Animal Collective live quite a few times, but I'm not sure how often I've enjoyed one of their shows from start to finish. Maybe that's because their performances seem to be as much for them (if not more) than for the audience they're playing for. Animal Collective like to work out new material, usually from whatever album they're planning next, in their live sets, fusing select older songs from their growing catalogue in between to form several extended jammy setpieces. Sometimes, as it was with material from Merriweather Post Pavilion during the end of the Strawberry Jam tour, the new material sounds fully formed and decipherable; other times, it's still in the chrysalis stage.

For last night's headlining set at the San Miguel stage, the band sounded like it was right in the middle of those two extremes. The new material sounds like the band's planning another left turn, one more organically percussive than Merriweather's dubby, blasted beats (an element no doubt aided by Panda Bear's return to a drumkit on stage) with glitchy electronic textures. Avey Tare, Panda, and Deakin all took turns on vocals (a rarity for Deakin), and it was a welcome change to hear them screaming and hollering again. Avey told me in an interview last year that the band was looking to build the new songs around moving around and to "sweat" a little more on stage, and there was definitely a fair bit of hopping around. Overall, the new songs sound sharp and reasonably defined, but one suspects they are works in progress.

When older songs were introduced into the set, the audience lit up, and the band sounded like they were having fun too. There were tense renditions of "Brother Sport" and "Summertime Clothes"; Sung Tongs highlight and perennial live favorite "We Tigers" made a spirited appearance-- the band didn't gather around Noah's drum set and bash it out the way they did on the Feels tour, but the energy was there. On the other hand, the slow-drawn ending of "Can You See the Words" was stretched out for what seemed like eternity (in a good way). --LF

DJ Shadow [Llevant Stage; 2:45 a.m.]

There's nothing out of the ordinary about a festival set starting late. But a festival set starting 45 minutes early? That caught just about everyone by surprise. If you hadn't checked the Primavera website, there was no way of knowing that DJ Shadow would begin at 2:45 a.m. rather than 3:30 a.m. So when he started, the Llevant stage area was about a third full. By the time 3:30 rolled around, it was overflowing with dancers.

Shadow's current tour is called "Live From the Shadowsphere" and he performs inside of a huge sphere in the middle of the stage. For most of the set, the sphere was closed and you couldn't see him. Hallucinatory visuals were projected onto the object, turning it into a planet, a globe, the Death Star, an eyeball, and, during one dazzling segment, a series of sports balls (a basketball, a baseball, a bowling ball, a soccer ball, etc.) Every now and then, the sphere would rotate to show an open door, revealing Shadow hard at work behind his decks.

His set leaned towards the rave side of things, which delighted the energetic crowd. He beefed up tracks from Endtroducing and The Private Press with drum'n'bass breakbeats and faster BPMs-- even quieter ones like "Building Steam With a Grain of Salt" and "Six Days". He slipped in a few hip-hop tracks, like the Pharcyde's "Passin Me By" and Lil Wayne's "A Milli", sped up to chipmunk levels. The new track "I Gotta Rock" banged hard, a slow, thunderous build to an ecstatic peak.

When the set had ended, credits were projected onto the Shadowsphere, acknowledging the technical and artistic minds behind the spectacle. And with that, the wild, beautiful, sleep-deprived extravaganza known as the Primavera Sound Festival was over. --AP